miscellany
Oct. 9th, 2006 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaeclecticMy main accomplishment for the day: picked up an assortment of drill bits at Sears at lunchtime, then came home after work and drilled a hole in the wall outside, so that I could hang my Green Man where I wanted to. This accomplishment is noteworthy in part because I have owned the drill for at least 20, maybe 25 years, and have been getting by all that time with the very small set of drill bits that came with it -- six to start with, but somewhere along the way I broke one, so five for the past however many years.
On another note altogether, I was reinforced as to the correctness of my decision to switch insurance companies. I had left a message at the old broker's office over the weekend, pointing out that my October auto-pay had gone through, and politely inquiring if they had not received my cancellation FAX on Sept 25? So today I got a message back, saying yes they got my cancellation and will send a refund, and by the way if I've moved I should please get them my new address, so the refund check gets sent to the right place. And I thought: oh could I have been so dumb as to not put my new address on the FAX? But no. When I checked, it was there, and the text of the message even said "please send any further correspondence to my new address shown below". These people are just not clever.
Also, not a bad day at work. Lots o' meetings, but mostly useful ones, and I ended up staying a bit late just because I got absorbed in what I was doing (spinning out variations on the placement and style of a selector being added to an already rather cluttered page, ho hum).
Meanwhile, back at the stream of consciousness ranch, I want to tell you a story. The Green Man in question is a concrete wall hanging, which I obtained at a garden center in England (and have never before actually hung outside, although that is clearly the intended use). Not long after I bought it, my friend Shelagh took me to see a person who was supposedly a psychic. I didn't realize in advance that she was the kind of purported psychic who claims to speak to the spirits of the dead. I was more than a bit skeptical, and maintained enough reserve to clearly observe her strategies: She would say something like "I see a person named Rose..." and if you didn't respond, she'd go on, but if you did she'd glom right on and start adding details, watching to see what bits you reacted to. Despite seeing this fairly clearly, I did respond to the name Jack by telling her that had been my grandfather's name, and she spun a whole story about how he was watching over me. I had not, of course, explained to her that my father's father Jack had died when my father was two, and therefore I didn't know him, much less appreciate the idea of him watching over me. Anyway, even with the obvious fakery, I was well and truly creeped out. Then, just a few days after, another friend of mine took one look at the Green Man and exclaimed "Jack o' the Green!". Somehow this caused the tale of my unexpectedly fond departed grandfather to be inextricably linked in my mind with the Green Man. I had to put a lot of mental energy into not being creeped out and imagining the Green Man was somehow my unknown grandfather watching me. But I did get over it in time. Still, I retain a cautious habit of thought in which I direct old Jack o' the Green to keep watch -- watch for intruders, that is, as opposed to watching me. He is now perfectly positioned to guard the patio. The End.
On another note altogether, I was reinforced as to the correctness of my decision to switch insurance companies. I had left a message at the old broker's office over the weekend, pointing out that my October auto-pay had gone through, and politely inquiring if they had not received my cancellation FAX on Sept 25? So today I got a message back, saying yes they got my cancellation and will send a refund, and by the way if I've moved I should please get them my new address, so the refund check gets sent to the right place. And I thought: oh could I have been so dumb as to not put my new address on the FAX? But no. When I checked, it was there, and the text of the message even said "please send any further correspondence to my new address shown below". These people are just not clever.
Also, not a bad day at work. Lots o' meetings, but mostly useful ones, and I ended up staying a bit late just because I got absorbed in what I was doing (spinning out variations on the placement and style of a selector being added to an already rather cluttered page, ho hum).
Meanwhile, back at the stream of consciousness ranch, I want to tell you a story. The Green Man in question is a concrete wall hanging, which I obtained at a garden center in England (and have never before actually hung outside, although that is clearly the intended use). Not long after I bought it, my friend Shelagh took me to see a person who was supposedly a psychic. I didn't realize in advance that she was the kind of purported psychic who claims to speak to the spirits of the dead. I was more than a bit skeptical, and maintained enough reserve to clearly observe her strategies: She would say something like "I see a person named Rose..." and if you didn't respond, she'd go on, but if you did she'd glom right on and start adding details, watching to see what bits you reacted to. Despite seeing this fairly clearly, I did respond to the name Jack by telling her that had been my grandfather's name, and she spun a whole story about how he was watching over me. I had not, of course, explained to her that my father's father Jack had died when my father was two, and therefore I didn't know him, much less appreciate the idea of him watching over me. Anyway, even with the obvious fakery, I was well and truly creeped out. Then, just a few days after, another friend of mine took one look at the Green Man and exclaimed "Jack o' the Green!". Somehow this caused the tale of my unexpectedly fond departed grandfather to be inextricably linked in my mind with the Green Man. I had to put a lot of mental energy into not being creeped out and imagining the Green Man was somehow my unknown grandfather watching me. But I did get over it in time. Still, I retain a cautious habit of thought in which I direct old Jack o' the Green to keep watch -- watch for intruders, that is, as opposed to watching me. He is now perfectly positioned to guard the patio. The End.